by Sharon Lee
He whistled. “You found the cipher, did you? Clever girl.” He glanced thoughtfully down at the box.
“You wouldn’t have used any of that formula, would you? Say, back home or in Lahore-Gadani?”
Inas bowed, scholar to scholar. “They killed my father. He had no sons to avenge him.”
“Right.”
More silence—enough that Inas began to worry about the reasoning going on behind those blue out-worlder eyes. It would, after all, be a simple thing to shoot her—and far more merciful than the punishment the priests would inflict upon her, were she discovered dressed in a boy’s tunic and trousers, her face uncovered, her hair cut and braided with green string.
“Your timing’s good,” Jamie Moore said abruptly. “We’ve got a sector chief checking in tomorrow. What I can do, I can show you to the chief, and the two of you can talk. This is sector chief business, understand me?”
Inas bowed. “I understand, Jamie Moore. Thank you.”
“Better hold that until you meet the chief,” he said, and the door opened behind her, though she had not seen him give a signal.
“We’ll stand you a bath, a meal and a bed,” he said, and jerked his head at the doorman. “Get her downstairs. Guard on the door.”
He looked at her once more. “What happens next is up to you.”
* * *
SHE SAT ON THE edge of the chatrue—well, no she didn’t. Properly a chatrue, a female’s bed, would be hidden by a curtain at a height so that even a tall man could not see over. This was hardly a bed meant for a woman . . .
She sat on the edge of the bed then, with the daybreak meal in dishes spread around her, amazed and appreciative at the amount of food she was given to break her fast.
But, after all—she had come to the house in the clothes of a boy, admitted to taking a son’s duty of retribution to herself; and agreed to meet with the sector chief. These were all deeds worthy of male necessities; hence they fed her as a male would be fed, with two kinds of meat, with porridge of proper sweetness and with extra honey on the side, with fresh juice of the gormel-berry—and brought her clean boy’s clothes in the local style, that she might appear before the sector chief in proper order.
She had slept well, waking only once, at the sound of quiet feet in the stairway. Left behind when she woke then was a half-formed dream: In it she had lost her veils to Danyal, but rather than leer, he had screamed and run, terrified of what he had seen revealed in her face.
Too late now to run, she thought as she slipped back into sleep, both Danyal and her father’s false friend had fallen to her vengeance. And the curiat was in the hands of the infidel.
Inas ate all the breakfast, leaving but some honey. There had been too many days since her father’s death when food had been scarce; too many nights when her stomach was empty, for her to stint now on sustenance.
“Hello, Child!” A voice called from outside the door. There followed a brisk knock, with the sound of laughter running behind it. “Your appointment begins now!”
* * *
THE NAME OF JAMIE Moore’s boss was Sarah Chang. She was small and round, with crisp black hair bristling all over her head, and slanting black eyes. Her clothing was simple—a long-sleeved shirt, open at the throat, a vest, trousers and boots. A wide belt held a pouch and a holster. Her face was naked, which Inas had expected. What she had not expected was the jolt of shock she felt.
Sarah Chang laughed.
“You’re the one pretending to be a boy,” she commented, and Inas bowed, wryly.
“I am an exception,” she said. “I do not expect to meet myself.”
“Here, you’re an exception,” the woman corrected, and pointed at one of the room’s two chairs, taking the other for herself. “Sit. Tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out. But don’t dawdle.”
So, she had told it. The gift of the curiat; the visit of Scholar Hafeez to her father; Humaria’s wedding; the violation of her father’s study, and his brutal questioning; her escape into the night, and return to a house of the unjustly murdered—father, books and servant. Her revenge.
“You mixed a batch of skihi, blew up a couple buildings, disguised yourself as a boy and walked away from it,” Sarah Chang said, by way of summing up. She shook her head. “Pretty cool. How’d you think of all that?”
Inas moved her hands. “I learned from Thelma Delance. The recipe for skihi was in her curiat. She disguised herself as a man in order to pursue her scholarship.”
“So she did.” The woman closed her eyes. “Any idea what I should do with you?”
Inas licked her lips. “I wish to be a scholar.”
“Not the line of work women usually get into, hereabouts.” Sarah Chang’s eyes were open now, and watching carefully.
“Thelma Delance—”
“Thelma was an outworlder,” the boss interrupted. “Like I am. Like Jamie is.”
This woman possessed a man’s hard purpose, Inas thought; she would do nothing for pity. She raised her chin.
“Surely, then, there is some place where I, too, would be an out-worlder, and free to pursue my life as I wish?”
Sarah Chang laughed.
“How old are you?” She asked then.
“Fourteen winters.”
The boss tipped her head. “Thirteen Standards, near enough. Regular old maid. And you’ve got a nice touch with an explosive.
“Skihi, for your information, is an extremely volatile mixture. Many explosive experts have the missing fingers to prove it.” She bounced out of her chair and shook her head.
“All right, Inas, let’s go.”
She stayed in her chair, looking up into the slanting black eyes. “Go where?”
“Out-world,” the boss said, and moved an impatient hand, pointing upward, toward the sky—and beyond.
Quiet Knives
THE TURTLES HAD CANCELED, the tidy kill-fee deposited to ship’s funds just before the message had hit her in box.
Just as well, thought Midj Rolanni, wearily. She sagged back into the pilot’s chair and reached for the cup nestled in the armrest holder. She’d hadn’t really wanted to reconfigure the flight deck for two turtles, anyway.
The ’toot wasn’t exactly prime grade and being cold didn’t improve it. She drank it anyway, her eyes on the screen, but seeing through it, into the past, and not much liking what she saw.
She finished the cold ’toot in a swallow, shuddered and threw the cup at the recycler. It hit the unit’s rim, shimmied for a heartbeat, undecided, and fell in, for a wonder. Midj sighed and leaned to the board, saving the turtles’ cancellation with a finger-tap, and accessing the stored message queue.
There wasn’t much there besides the turtles’ message—the transmittal, listing the cargo she’d paid Teyope to carry for her and the credit letter from the bank, guaranteeing the funds, half on cargo transmittal, half on delivery.
And the letter from Kore. Pretty thin letter, really, just a couple of lines. Not what you’d call reason for off-shipping a perfectly profitable cargo onto a trader just a little gray—“. . . just a little gray,” she repeated the thought under her breath—and Teyope did owe her, which even he acknowledged, damn his black heart; so the cargo was in a fine way to arriving as ordered, where ordered, and not a line of the guarantees found in violation.
She hoped.
Her hand moved on its own, fingers tapping the access, though she could have told the whole of Kore’s note out from heart. Still, her eyes tracked the sentences, few as they were, as if she’d never read them before.
Or as if she hoped they’d say something different this time.
Her bad luck, the words formed the same sentences they had since the first, the sentences making up one spare paragraph, the message of which was—trouble.
Midj. You said, if I ever changed my mind, you’d come. Cessilee Port, Shaltren, on Saint Belamie’s Day. I’ll meet you. Kore.
“And for this,” she said out loud, hearing her voice vib
rate against the metal skin of her ship. “For this, you shed cargo and take your ship—your home and your livelihood—onto Juntavas headquarters?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d asked the question since the letter’s receipt. Sometimes, she’d whispered it, sometimes shouted. Skeedaddle, now. Her ship didn’t tell her nothing, but that she needed to go. She’d promised, hadn’t she?
And so she had—promised. Half her lifetime ago, and the hardest thing she’d done before or since was to close the hatch on him, knowing where he was going. She’d replayed their last conversation until her head ached and her eyes blurred, wondering what she could have said instead, that would have made him understand . . .
But he had understood. He’d chosen, eyes open, knowing her, knowing how she felt. He’d said as much, and say what you would about Korelan Zar, he was no liar, nor ever had been.
“You go, then,” the memory of her voice, shaking, filled her ears. “If this job is so important you gotta take up the Juntavas, too—then go. I ain’t gonna stop you. And I ain’t gonna know you, either. Walk down that ramp, Korelan, and you’re as good as dead to me, you hear?”
She remembered his face: troubled, but not anything like rethinking the plan. He’d thought it through—he’d told her so, and she believed him. Kore’d always been the thinker of the two of them.
“Midj,” he said, and she remembered that his voice hadn’t been precisely steady, either. “I’ve got to. I told you—”
“You told me,” she’d interrupted, harsher maybe in memory than in truth. She remembered she’d been crying by then, with her hand against the open hatch, and the ramp run down to blastcrete, a car waiting, its windows opaqued and patient, just a few yards beyond.
“You told me,” she’d said again, and she remembered that it had been hard to breathe. “And I told you. I ain’t comin’ with you. I ain’t putting Skeedaddle into Juntavas service. You want to sell yourself, I guess you got the right. But this ship belongs to me.”
His face had closed then, and he nodded, just once, slung his kit over his shoulder and headed down the ramp. Chest on fire, she’d watched him go, heard her own voice, barely above a whisper.
“Kore . . .”
He turned and looked up to where she stood, fists braced against her ship.
“You change your mind,” she said, “you send. I’ll come for you.”
He smiled then, so slight she might’ve missed it, if she hadn’t known him so well.
“Thanks, Midj. I’ll remember that.”
In the present, Midj Rolanni, captain-owner of the independent tradeship Skeedaddle, one of a dozen free traders elected as liaison to TerraTrade—respectable and respected—Midj Rolanni drew a hard breath.
Twenty Standards. And Kore had remembered.
* * *
SHE SET DOWN as prearranged in Vashon’s Yard and walked over to the office, jump-bag on her shoulder.
Vashon himself was on the counter, fiddling with the computer, fingers poking at the keys. He looked up and nodded, then put his attention back on the problem at hand. Midj leaned her elbows on the counter and frowned up at the ship board.
Rebella was in port—no good news, there—and BonniSu, which was better. In fact, she’d actively enjoy seeing Su Bonner, maybe buy her a beer and catch up on the news. Been a couple Standards since they’d been in port together, and Su had bought last time . . .
“Sorry, Cap,” Vashon said, breaking into this pleasant line of thought. “Emergency order, all good now. What’ll it be?”
All spacers were “Cap” to Vashon, who despite it was one of the best all-around spaceship mechanics in the quadrant—and maybe the next.
“Ship’s Skeedaddle, out of Dundalk,” she said, turning from the board. “Got an appointment for a general systems check. Replace what’s worn, lube the coils, and bring her up to spec—that’s a Sanderson rebuild in there, now, so the spec’s ’re—”
“Right, right . . .” He was poking at the keys again, bringing up the records. “Got it all right here, Cap. How’re them podclamps we fitted working out for you?”
“Better’n the originals,” she said honestly, which was no stretch, the originals having seen a decade of hard use before Skeedaddle ever came to her, never mind what she’d put on ’em.
“Good,” he said absently, frowning down at his screen. “Now, that Sanderson—we have it on-file to tune at ninety-percent spec, that being efficient enough for trade work, like we talked about. You’re still wantin’—”
“Bring her up to true spec,” Midj interrupted, which she’d decided already and, dammit, she wasn’t going to second-guess herself at this hour. If she was a fool, then she was, and it wouldn’t be the first time she’d made the wrong call.
Not even close.
Vashon was nodding, making quick notes on his keypad. “Bring her to true spec, aye, Cap, will do.” He looked up.
“You’ll be wanting the upgraded vents, then, Cap? If you’re going to be running at spec, I advise it.”
She nodded. “Take a look at the mid-ship stabilizer, too, would you? Moving her just now, I thought I noticed a slide.”
“’Cause you come in without cans,” he said, making another note. “But, sure, we’ll check it—ought to ride stable, cans or no cans.” He looked up again.
“Anything else?”
“That’s all I know about. If you find anything major that needs fixing, I’ll be at the Haven.”
“Haven it is,” he said, entering that into the file, too. “Cash, card, or ship’s credit?”
“Ship’s credit.”
“Right, then.” He gave her a crabbed smile. “She ought to be good to go by the end of the week, barring we find anything unexpected. You can check progress on our stats channel, updated every two hours, local. Ship’s name is your passcode.”
“Thanks,” she said, and shifted the bag into a more comfortable position on her shoulder. “I’ll see you at the end of the week, barring the unexpected.”
They each nodded to each other and she let herself out the door that gave onto the open Port.
* * *
“Going where?” Su Bonner paused with her beer halfway to her mouth.
“Shaltren,” Midj repeated, trying to sound matter-of-fact, and not at all reassured by the other woman’s decisive headshake.
“Shaltren’s not the place you want to be at this particular point in time, Captain Rolanni, me heart.” Su put her beer down on the table with an audible thud. “Trust me on this one, like you never have before.”
“I trust you plenty,” Midj said, spinning her own beer ’round the various scars on the plastic tabletop, that being a handy way to not meet her friend’s eyes. “You know I do.”
“Then you’ve given over the idea of going to Shaltren.” Su picked up her beer and had a hefty swallow. “Good.”
Midj sighed, still navigating the bottle through the tabletop galaxy. “So, what’s wrong with Shaltren? Besides the usual.”
“The usual being that it’s Juntavas Headquarters? That’d be bad enough, by your lights and by mine. Lately, though, there’s more. Chairman Trogar, they say, is not well-loved.”
Frowning, Midj glanced up. “Must break his heart.”
“Not exactly, no.” Su had another swallow of beer and shook two fingers at the bartender. “What I heard is, he means to keep it that way. Anybody who talks across him or who doesn’t rise fast enough when he yells ‘lift!’—they’re dead right off. He’s got himself an aggressive expansion plan in motion and he doesn’t mind spending lives—that’s anybody’s but his own—to get what he wants.”
Midj shrugged. “The Juntavas always grabbed what they could.”
The new beers came, the ’keeper collected Su’s empty, looked a question at Midj and was waved away.
“Not always.” Su was taking her last comment as a debating point. “I’m not saying every decent spacer should sign up onto the Juntavas workforce, but I will say they’ve been getting car
efuller in later years. They’re still trading in all the stuff nobody ought, but they haven’t been as gun-happy as they were back in the day . . .” She raised a hand, showing palm.
“Cold comfort to you and yours, I grant. The fact remains, there was a trend toward less of that and more . . . circumspection—and now what rises to the top of the deck but Grom Trogar, who wants a return to the bad old days—and looks like getting them.”
“Well.” Midj finished her beer, set the bottle aside, and cracked the seal on the second.
“So,” Su said into the lengthening silence. “You changed your mind about going to Shaltren, right? At least until somebody resets Mr. Trogar’s clock?”
Midj sighed and met her friend’s eyes. “Don’t see my business waiting that long, frankly.”
“What business is worth losing your ship, getting killed, or both?”
Trust Su to ask the good questions. Midj kept her eyes steady.
“You remember Korelan Zar,” she not-asked, and Su frowned.
“Tall, thin fella; amber eyes and coffee-color skin,” she said slowly. “I remember thinking that skin was so pretty-looking.” She fingered her beer. “Your partner, right? He was the one that told you one day he take you to Panore for a vacation, right?”
Midj nodded, said nothing.
Su’s sip was nearly a chug, then she continued into the silence.
“Right. Always wondered what happened to him. Never got around to asking. Must be—what? Fifteen, eighteen Standards?”
“Twenty.” Her voice sounded tight in her own ears. “What happened to him was he figured he had to sign on with another crew—he had reasons, they seemed good to him, and that’s all twenty Standards in the past. Thing is, I told him, if he ever needed to ship out—call, and I’d come get him.”
Su was quiet. Midj had a swig of beer, and another.
“And where he is, is Shaltren,” Su said eventually, after she enjoyed a couple of swigs, herself. “Midj—you don’t owe him.”
“I owe him—I promised.” She closed her eyes, opened them. “He asked me to come.”
“Shit.” More quiet, then—“How soon?”
